If any of you ride bikes, do you have any input on the purchase/riding thereof?
Inspired by a different thread - Farfelkugel, the multilayered horse name joke in "Robin Hood, Men in Tights".
Inspired by a different thread - Farfelkugel, the multilayered horse name joke in "Robin Hood, Men in Tights". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLtk_VfbKzU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLtk_VfbKzU
I bought one of the Costco brand hybrid Street/mountain jobs and it's been great. They have several styles. Would buy again.
ReplyDeleteI have a Fuji road bike - much lighter than a commuter bike, thus easier to get on a bike rack, but spendier than a commuter bike. Get a separate seat for comfort if needed.
ReplyDeleteI spent as much on mine as many people would on a second-hand car, so I don't think my general input would be useful. What sort of riding were you planning on doing? Would you be carrying groceries home, or just you and maybe a small backpack?
ReplyDeleteTo start with, just riding - on streets or mostly paved/cleared trails - no off-roading. I would like to eventually add a rack or panniers on the back so I can do a little bit of dragging around stuff.
ReplyDeletei bought something similar to this. (they dont seem to make the model i bought any more.)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.costco.com/Diamondback-Edgewood-Hybrid-Bike-2016.product.100242696.html
its very solid and not-cheap feeling and is fine for the casual rider. also, the costco warranty / return policy is basically legendary, so...
I wonder if I can buy a bike in Michigan and drag it back across Ontario ...
ReplyDeleteunless its made out of cocaine, i dont see why not
ReplyDeleteI got one of these a while ago from Target:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000FN04G2/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8
It was later in season, so it was the floor model (i.e. already assembled), and I use it to bike on roads to the train station plus going through the local state park on occasion.
Sadly, my anatomy limits the size of bike, so usually not floor models.
ReplyDeleteFor that sort of riding, I'd look in the hybrid section. That means mountainbike parts on a fairly upright/traditional sort of frame with flat bars of some variant (flat meaning "anything except race bars". I like butterfly bars. But bars are nearly as personal as saddles.). There's a reason the format's so popular.
ReplyDeleteFor maintenance reasons, you'll probably want something Shimano, or at least Shimano compatible (which is basically everything now). They're very close to a monopoly in what they do. Their product lines on the mtb side run Tourney (there's even various levels of them, and they go on the ultra cheap bikes), Alivio, Deore, slx, xt, xtr.
XTR is basically racing gear — very light weight, very strong, not very durable, extremely expensive. A groupset (a full complement of the minor parts that go on a bike, so gears, crankset, brakes, controls, chain, derailers, all that stuff) runs about 1200 bucks, so you mostly won't find it on bikes under 3k or so.
I mostly buy Deore. I think that's where the diminishing returns start hitting hard. On my current bike, though, I splurged for an XT groupset, a cheap last year's model. And yes, the stuff is better — but not that much, and if I hadn't been going all out I'd have saved an extra 150 euros by going with Deore.
If I was going for a budget, I'd still try to avoid Tourney (I think at the very lowest end they still sell six speed free wheels, which ought to be criminal — free hub construction is just much better, and shimano's patents on it have already run out even), but anywhere from Alivio on up will do. Alivio is still 3x9 speed, Deore is 3x10, and this year's XT is 3x11. For most purposes, it doesn't much matter whether you have 3x7 or 3x10 — you usually get the same extreme gears, just tighter intervals between. Which makes it more likely that you can find a gear that's comfortabl for the road, headwinds, grade, and your level of tiredness.
Basically anything you buy in the hybrid category will have the same basic layout: rigid rear, maybe a suspension fork, maybe a suspension seat post, v-brakes aka linear-pull brakes (big improvement on 80s and earlier hand-operated brakes), derailer gears with a triple front. When you get toward the more expensive models, you can expect exotics like hydraulic disc brakes, gear hubs, sometimes even shaft drive. Some of those also exist as cheap and cheerful but not particularly good variants. Cheap disc brakes are quite often just not as good (except out in the muddy forest) as a v-brake, for instance.
Suspension forks and seat post depend on how good your asphalt is. Here in Europe, I pretty much disdain 'em (not that they exist for my rider weight, but that's more or less a separate issue). On a bike less than 300 bucks or so, a suspension fork is probably not gonna be very good. Might as well buy a rigid one and either save even more money or get better rest-of-bike.